1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an authority management apparatus, an authority management system, and an authority management method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a business scene, an upper management person often requests a subordinate worker or his secretary to perform processing, such as copying, printing, and facsimile transmission, in substitution for him.
In this regard, in order to perform such substitute processing with a system that centrally manages an authority to access an office appliance, such as an image forming apparatus (i.e., a printer and a digital multifunction peripheral (MFP)), it is necessary that the person requested to perform the substitute processing temporarily perform the substitute processing on an authority of the requesting person.
Focusing on substitution of print processing, typically, a requesting person previously performs hold printing (hold job) and notifies a password for resuming the held processing to a requestee. In hold printing, when an image forming apparatus receives print data from an external apparatus, the image forming apparatus does not immediately print the received print data. The image forming apparatus stores the received print data in a storage device included therein. When a user generates an instruction for printing the stored print data, the image forming apparatus prints the stored print data. A password is associated with print data. The image forming apparatus prints the stored print data only when a correct password is input together with the print instruction.
In addition, focusing on performing processing on other person's authority higher than the authority of a requestee, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-166241 discusses a method for controlling processing with a security policy describing a rule for handling a document.
Typically in hold printing, even if a requester loses the authority to access the requested job, for example due to a change in office or retirement after having requested a print job to a requestee, the requestee can resume the requested print job as long as the requestee has already received the password to the job. That is, an access right cannot be always managed in the above-described case although access rights are centrally managed.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-166241 discusses a method using pull printing, in which data to be processed and processing conditions for the data are stored. With this method, once a security policy or a processing condition is set for data to be processed, a change in setting of an access right cannot be reflected in processing the data.
In either of the above-described cases, if a requester loses an authority after completing an operation for substitute processing, a requestee can perform the substitute processing, which may cause distribution of confidential information.